DIAMANTE, JUAN BAUTISTA. — Spanish dramatist, priest and knight of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, prior of the convent of Morón, born in Madrid in 1625, died there in 1687.
He wrote about fifty dramas, some of them in collaboration, on subjects drawn from Lope, Guevara, and Amescua. There are also compositions of a biblical or hagiographic character, or, in any case, religious ones (Cumplir a Dios su palabra, S. Teresa de Jesús, S. María Magdalena de' Pazzì, La Virgen del Buen Suceso, La devoción del Rosario, which contains evident reminiscences of Calderon’s La devoción de la Cruz, etc.). The style is bombastic, the language good, and a certain vis dramatica is not lacking.
BIBL.: A. de Latour, Corneille e J. B. D., Paris 1861; E. Cotarclo, J. B. D. y sus comedias, in Boletín de la Academia española, 3 (1916), pp. 272–97, 424–97. Sole Scudieri Ruggieri